Flipside Red IPA | Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.

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Notes / Commercial Description:
Just when it feels like the dog days will never end, suddenly, the switch is flipped, the air gets cooler and it’s clear that autumn is on the way. Featuring a ruby-red hue and abundant tropical fruit and citrus hop flavors, Flipside Red IPA is the perfect beer for the final flash of summer.

Reviews by Huffs:

More User Reviews:

A- Pours a gorgeous fiery red with carbonation bubbles racing upwards to form a decadent soft-white head of foam.

S- Smells of a terrific blend of spicy pine hops with a sweet malty backbone.

T- Taste is extremely reminiscent of the smell. The Citra, Simcoe, and Centennial tops tingle the taste buds, while the darkened malt taste sweetens the back end.

M- Nice, crisp, and well-carbonated. No surprises here. Goes down like a typical 6.5% IPA.

O- Very unique beer we have here. It is an IPA no questions asked, but it is a different breed of IPA. Not quite as roasty and malty as a black IPA, nor not as citrusy and bitter as a IIPA or even an IPA for that matter. Sierra Nevada continues to truly brew staples of each different beer style. A red IPA is mean't to blend together and blur the lines of IPA's and other styles. This particular brew does just that. There are a handful of breweries that just can't miss, Sierra Nevada is among them. To infinity, and beyond.

This was one of my favorite Siearra Nevada products . now for 2015 it will only be available in the fall variety pack .. I hope other who are displeased by this Let Sierra Nevada know .. Make us bbu 6 beers we don't care for to get the good stuff.. another poor management decision form Sierra nevada

Smell: Predominately hoppy, notes of grapefruit, additional oily citrus and even a sliver of mango. Rather grassy with pine-hinting resins. Underneath, a little basic toast and grain.

Taste: Toasted breadcrusts, touches of grain and a low, brief caramel-esque sweetness. Very, very faint unsweetened chocolate powder. Sharp, citric grapefruit and orangy kicks with a leisurely bitterness. Moderately resinous, grassy. Pulls up on the grassy, resiny tones at the tail end and into the bitter, drying finish.

Appearance: Pours a very pretty, almost opaque, deep, dark, mahogany color, speckled with reddish highlights and a finger of white-colored head that quickly dissolved away into a thin lacing of foam that completely covered the top of the beer.

Aroma: Very aromatic with lots of floral, piney, grassy, citrusy hops, as well as some bready, toasted malt, which imparts notes of freshly baked rye bread, including the aromas of caraway, black pepper and heather, as well as aromas of caramel and honey. But the predominate aroma is of hops.

Mouthfeel: Medium-bodied, crisp, and nicely effervescent as there is quite a bit of carbonation to tickle the taste buds. With an ABV of 6.2%, there is no alcohol on the palate.

Overall: This is an excellent, beautifully balanced IPA. And this is coming from a beer drinker that doesn’t generally like IPAs! My tolerance for hops must be growing as I really, really like this beer! Very, highly recommended!

Sometimes, you want a really assertive beer. This isn't an IPA. IPA means India pale ale. This isn't a pale ale at all. This is a big, nasty red beer with hops that smell of dank vegetation and an assertive if not abrasive malt that battles with the dank, vegetation hops for domination. The combat between the aggressive hops and aggressive malt results in a stalemate. For the Sierra Nevada fan, the result is a highly enjoyable ale that is greater than the sum of it's parts. Your wife/girlfriend will hate this beer.

The look is outstanding. It's a dark red, trending almost so dark as to look brown in the evening light of my house. The head foams up off-white and retains, lacing down the glass.

The smell of this beer - and smell is the only word for it - is of a dank, wet, meadow, with all of the smells of vegetation that entails. Unlike Corona and some other industrial brews, which smell of rotten vegetables, Flipside smells of a dank, earthy meadow - within the smell there is a suggestion of aging vegetation, but it's buried in the mix. The overall impression is of a fresh, very earthy brew.

The taste is as advertised - very earthy. The malt is heavy on flavor and it battles with the hops to create a dank, dark, heavy ale. The finish is clean, without for example the hops-based hint of paradise that you experience concluding a Rebel. A different aesthetic is at work here - up close and personal with a Sierra Nevada meadow, where the grass and the earth are clear and present.

This ale is medium-heavy in feel. It's not subjectively as thick as, for example, Samuel Adams Octoberfest. The taste is more heavy than the feel. At the same time, this is a big, deeply roasted barley malt red beer. If you're looking for something watery to chug, look elsewhere.

In my humble opinion, this red ale more than Torpedo is the logical conclusion of the direction of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. Sierra Nevada's recent hits Torpedo and Nooner are fresh, piney, sprints through a spring meadow. Pale Ale, in contrast, uses dank hops to generate an aroma of vegetation, and a significantly roasted malt body for a toasty flavor. Here in Flipside, the dank hops and the roasted barley malt are taken to 11. Nobody wants to drink the same beer all the time. Flipside is great at being what it is. One day out of 100, probably in the fall, you prefer this heavy red ale to Torpedo.

Pours a soda-esque medium brown, with a good bit of fluffy off-white foam forming on top as it goes. Head nearly filled my pint glass to the top, and seems to be hanging around pretty well -- even now it's a coating on top with a much thicker ring around the edges, and significant trails left behind where it had been before. The color isn't so much "red" as the name "Red IPA" would suggest, at least not until a good bit of light hits it and the red-orangeyness becomes more clear; looks more like a very dark red-orangey brown in the glass. Seems to be pretty clear, but maybe not perfectly clear as I can't really make out rising bubbles even with the help of my phone's screen -- it takes holding it up to the light to see those (but they're there.)

The appearance says "malty!" but the smell definitely says "hoppy!" -- even from a foot or so away I got a good whiff of grapefuit/piney type hops, and when sniffing the beer now that the foam on top has settled down into a thin coating, that's the first smell to jump out at me. Actually, maybe not entirely the standard grapefruit/pine IPA sort of thing -- there's something a little different in there, definitely a planty sort of smell but I can't quite pinpoint it. I don't think I quite noticed it the first time I had this one, though that time I only had about half a bottle's worth since I split it with my sister. Reminds me of walking through the spice aisle at the grocery store, though... or maybe walking under certain spicy-ish smelling trees? Either way, it's a nice smell.

Taste is not as hop-dominated as the smell would indicate but the hops definitely still make themselves known right away, that herbal/planty sort of thing I was picking up on the end of the smell is the first thing that shows up in the taste. There's also some nice toasty/dark bread type malt flavors hanging out in there, and a bit of sweetness at first that's pretty much totally demolished by the bitterness from the hops by the second sip. Bitterness is present for sure, but not in an overpowering or unpleasant way, just a bit of a leafy/citrus-rind bitter that comes in with the other flavors and lingers in the mouth a little longer than they do. At about the halfway point, I'm noticing that once the bitterness fades there's some nuttyish, almost savory malty flavor that lingers a bit too. Seems pretty nicely balanced, while still leaning more toward being a hoppy beer. Considering that this is a "red IPA," or basically a big malty red ale with extra hops, I'd say that's probably exactly what they were going for.

Mouthfeel is nice also -- nice soft bubbly carbonation at first, good medium feel to it, substantial but not to the point of feeling thick or "heavy"... though it does get a little more prickly/fizzy feeling toward the end of the glass as the foam on top thins out a bit. Very drinkable, I found myself emptying out the first half of the glass *much* quicker than expected. No indication that it's over 6% ABV, if not for the flavors being as big as they are I would've guessed more in the low 5% range similar to Sierra Nevada's standard Pale Ale. Still probably the closest thing to a weak point this beer has due to the getting a little pricklier toward the end of the glass, but only due to being just slightly less amazing than everything else.

Overall -- yeah, this one is GOOD. It's basically exactly what I was hoping that one of these hoppy red ales/red IPAs would be like -- lots of hops, lots of malt, you taste both and neither one overpowers the other and it all just works together so well. All things considered Flipside is probably my favorite out of the fall pack, which is saying something considering that there's not a single bad (or even average) beer in that pack. I'd definitely buy a six-pack of this one if they still put it in six-packs.

Pours into a standard pint glass a deep amber/tawny with a great looking billowing light beige head atop,great color and a great head,it just looks like fall.Aromas of citric hops and nutty malt with light caramel sweetness.The palate is alot like aromas with a good shot of citric hops intertwined with nutty maltiness with a little brown sugar in the finish.A solid hoppy amber ale,I could drink quite a few of these this fall.

Pours a very pretty copper-red with a tan head that leaves lace the length of the glass.
The aroma is of citrus and pine with a bit of baked bread beneath.
The taste is bitter up front with a hint of lemon following then an assault of pine and grapefruit pith coming up behind. It leaves a nicely tingly, drying bitter on the tongue.
The mouthfeel is medium and well carbonated.
Overall, a decent beer but it just didn't do it for me. Too many great IPA's out there (inc. several from SN) to buy this one again.